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Rehabilitating Uncle Remus (and His House in Atlanta)

Directors of the house, long associated with Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby, see it as a center for storytelling.Credit
Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

ATLANTA — The Wren’s Nest, the ocher-colored home of Joel Chandler Harris and his famous storyteller, Uncle Remus, has long been shunned by the black neighborhood that surrounds it.

Harris’s characters, including Br’er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby, may have been based on African folktales, but their antiquated and affectionate portrait of life in the old South is not welcome by detractors, and many neighbors have not forgotten the Wren’s Nest’s history of keeping black people out of the house that Uncle Remus built.

Now, however, the Queen Anne-style house — on a busy street in the West End neighborhood — is undergoing an overhaul by its board of directors and Lain Shakespeare, the executive director and a 24-year-old descendant of Harris. They say their goal is to overcome the antipathy many people feel toward Harris.

“We’re going to put our story out into the community,” said Marshall Thomas, chairman of the Joel Chandler Harris Association. “It’s what is called an underappreciated asset.” Harris defenders like Mr. Thomas note that in many literary circles Harris’s writing is admired for its dialogue and as a contribution to American folklore.

“We would have lost these tales,” if not for Harris, Mr. Thomas said, adding that he hoped to see the house refashioned one day as a center for Southern storytelling.

The house — which is on Georgia’s list of endangered historic landmarks — is struggling financially, and with his staff of four people, Mr. Shakespeare wants to stabilize its $120,000 annual budget, increase fund-raising and create partnerships with businesses in the West End and with Atlanta’s schools. Mr. Shakespeare is also reviving the Wren’s Nest Fest, a storytelling festival. It has created a literary magazine for high school students, and it maintains a Web site (wrensnestonline.com).

But some people would rather the tales of Uncle Remus, and the ebony Uncle Remus figurine stashed in the attic, stay where they are.

The association’s bylaws stipulated that “100 white ladies” were to run the house, which was turned into a museum in 1913. A federal judge ordered the Wren’s Nest integrated in 1968, a year after the Rev. Clyde Williams, who was black, sued the association under the Civil Rights Act after he was barred from entering. The bylaws were changed in 1973 to drop discriminatory language.

Still, hidden upstairs in a box is a cardboard sign that reads “No Integrated Classes Allowed.” And though scholars contend that Harris was a proponent of racial parity, his critics argue that segregation and white paternalism were part of his agenda.

Photo

Donald Griffin leads visitors through the Wrens Nest, home of Joel Chandler Harris, known for his fond depictions of life in the old South.Credit
Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

“At the end of the day, particularly the Uncle Remus figure is very problematic,” said William Jelani Cobb, an associate professor of history at Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta.

Dr. Cobb said he would oppose any effort to rehabilitate the stories and the house if it was not done in a critical way. Harris, through his writing, managed to turn “the worst period of American history into fodder for benign entertainment,” Dr. Cobb said.

Tyrone Brooks, a state representative from Atlanta, said he was shown “Song of the South,” Disney’s 1946 animated adaptation of the stories, when he was a teenager working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He said the movie was used as an example of the indoctrination of white hatred of black people, Mr. Brooks said.

“There should be an appreciation of all that history because it tells you where we were, and how far we’ve come,” said Mr. Brooks, who is president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials. “But it also tells you how far we have to go.”

Mr. Shakespeare said the legacy of the Disney movie posed the largest obstacle for the Wren’s Nest.

“My dream would be to have a culturally sensitive screening of the film at the Wren’s Nest,” he said.

Cheryl Renee Gooch, an associate dean at Clark Atlanta University who is black and has examined Harris’s career as a newspaperman, said she was supportive of the efforts to bring Harris into a more favorable light.

On a recent hazy Thursday afternoon, Nannie Thompson, the housekeeper on Mondays and a docent otherwise, led a tour of the Wren’s Nest. Ms. Thompson, who is black and 76 years old, grew up hearing the Br’er Rabbit tales, and she speaks lovingly of Harris, who she said believed that black children should learn how to read.

She pointed out the family resemblances in the photos — “The ears came from Grandma Harris” — and straightened the rugs and the furniture. The first-floor room where Harris died in 1908 is the only one that has not been changed since the house became a museum, she said.

“I had a fear of going in there,” Ms. Thompson said of the room, where she now keeps her vacuum cleaner tucked in a closet.

Why?

“If my mom told you all of the ghost tales she told us,” she said, “you’d feel the same way.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Rehabilitating Uncle Remus (And His House in Atlanta). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe